Good Morning!

Why do so many websites require a login? Sometimes a login is actually necessary, but all too often its just there because someone thought it would establish customer loyalty or something silly like that. It’s now common practice to require users to think up a passwords every time they use a new website. Most people use the same password everywhere, which of course reduces the security of password (and usually the point of a password is security). Worse still, many sites force you to choose a pre-selected “hint” question. I don’t need a hint. I know my password. All this does is reduce the security of my password to the security of, say, my mothers maiden name. What’s the point?
Sometimes a password gives me access to things like my credit card information. This is good. (I bought a textbook from half.com last week while I was in the class – would have been hard to whip out the ‘ole credit card) Other times, the login and password serve only to help the site track my usage (which they could do with a cookie anyway) and maybe offer me something personalized.
Weather.com, thankfully, didn’t require me to have a password. They let me personalize the site with my zip code, name, and birthday. I was hoping this meant that when I went to weather.com it would default to showing my the current conditions in Boston (12F today). Nope. All it does is say good morning and give me another link to get the current conditions. (see below) It would be just as easy to come to this site: people.bu.edu/zegna/ and click this link. Surprisingly, they weren’t too picky about acceptable names…